Literary Significance and Criticism
In May 1844 Poe wrote to James Russell Lowell that he considered it "perhaps the best of my tales of ratiocination" just before its first publication. Of Poe's three tales of ratiocination, "The Purloined Letter" is generally considered the best. When it was republished in the 1845 edition of The Gift, the editor called it "one of the aptest illustrations which could well be conceived of that curious play of two minds in one person."
The story was used by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and the philosopher Jacques Derrida to present opposing interpretations: Lacan's structuralist, Derrida's mystical, depending on deconstructive chance. The two exchanged a series of letters concerning the nature of desire.
Read more about this topic: The Purloined Letter
Famous quotes containing the words literary, significance and/or criticism:
“There is a difference between dramatizing your sensibility and your personality. The literary works which we think of as classics did the former. Much modern writing does the latter, and so has an affinity with, say, night-club acts in all their shoddy immediacy.”
—Paul Horgan (b. 1904)
“For a parent, it’s hard to recognize the significance of your work when you’re immersed in the mundane details. Few of us, as we run the bath water or spread the peanut butter on the bread, proclaim proudly, “I’m making my contribution to the future of the planet.” But with the exception of global hunger, few jobs in the world of paychecks and promotions compare in significance to the job of parent.”
—Joyce Maynard (20th century)
“A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he can divide.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)